“So, you guys breed wheat here?” I said, looking out across radial rows of standing crops made golden by the afternoon sun.

The round field must have been at least a few hundred feet in diameter, and the crop extended outward and upward in tiered terraces. In the center, at the lowest point, was a bright yellow central tower with a square metal box at the top.

“Brookhaven wheat,” Wesley said, rolling a single wheat stem between his fingers. “Although, we haven’t invented yet.” He tossed the stem onto the dirt and squished it beneath the toe of his shoe like a spent cigarette. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

Wesley wore a white lab coat with an embroidered patch that read: Brookhaven Gamma Ray Gardens. Written below it was his name: Dr. Kyle Wesley. His short brown hair was parted on the side, and his face was shaved clean. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. The kid must have spent the war years in school, rather than fighting. That was one way to live.

“And this is the mechanism that needs repairing?” I said, placing a hand on the yellow wall of the central tower. I had been an airplane mechanic during the war. Now, seven years out and 35 years under my belt, I had settled into a life of building and repairing big factory machines. It kept me busy. Didn’t have a wife to do that for me.

Wesley opened a hatch door on the side of the tower to reveal a set of gears and a hefty conveyor chain. I had seen similar mechanisms in the oven conveyors of bread factories. It wasn’t unfamiliar to me.

“There’s a chain assembly that unlatches a trap door to a lead-lined chamber below ground and raises a cobalt slug to the top of the tower,” Wesley said. “It’s typically driven by an external control box outside the yard here, but we’ve released it from the main drive train. You should be able to manipulate the chain if you can dislodge it. And that’s what we need. We need you to figure out what it’s caught on. The main engine couldn’t get it to budge. After yanking on it for ten minutes with no luck, it might be under some tension at this point.”

“Alright,” I said, bending down and flipping open my toolbox. “Give me thirty minutes and I should be able to figure out whether the chain is salvageable. If there’s a kink or a break, you’ll need to extract the whole mechanism for servicing.”

“Do your best,” Wesley said. “And if you manage to liberate the chain, don’t crank the gears. We want to keep the cobalt slug within its shielded housing.”

“Is it dangerous?” I said. I didn’t know what cobalt was, other than a shade of blue. It wasn’t a standard machining material.

“Not if it stays in the ground,” Wesley said.

“Fair enough,” I said, digging into my toolbox.

“I’m sure the work is in good hands,” Wesley said, bending down to meet my eyes. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes to check-in and see how things are going. If you need me before then, I’ll be in our seed vault. It’s the concrete bunker just west of the field here. We’re currently prepping a new deep freeze technique. Every new creation that this field produces goes to the seed vault and, if we can freeze them properly, they might last well into the next century. President Truman is very excited about the prospects. He was standing in this very field no more than two weeks ago.”

It was more words than I needed to know. “Great,” I said. “I’d better get started.”

“Of course,” Wesley said. He smiled, turned, and walked away.

I looked back to see as he passed between the tall rows of wheat and out through the perimeter wall. Just beyond the wall, I could see the gray concrete bunker. It was shaped like an airplane hangar. Unlike an airplane hangar, it looked strong enough to withstand the payload from a B-29 bomber.

Those must be some valuable seeds in there, I thought.

I pulled out my locking pliers, grabbed a grease rag from my back pocket, and leaned into the open tower hatch. I wrapped the grease rag around the closest chain, clamped down with my locking pliers, and gave it a tug. There was resistance going up and resistance going down. The chain was certifiably stuck.

I left the pliers where they were, went back to the toolbox, and pulled a flashlight. Back into the hatch, I looked down to see a steel-lined well with a trap door at the bottom. The door was striped in black and yellow. I followed the path of the chain downward until it disappeared into the floor of the well beside the door.

“No visible snags here,” I said, hearing my voice echo against the walls.

I twisted my body, craned my neck, and looked upward through the top portion of the tower.

“Eureka!” I said.

No more than four or five feet up the length of the tower was the snag in the chain. It was caught on the head of a loose rivet in a thick metal plate along the tower wall. I considered pulling on the chain to free it but thought better of it. If the main engine couldn’t dislodge it, what chance did I have? I had to remind myself of the most fundamental rule of machine repair. Work smart, not hard. Leverage and angle were going to be key here.

I grabbed hold of the locking pliers still clamped down onto the chain. I pushed against the chain, angling it away from the wall, and pulled down with all the strength I could muster.

Something gave.

I felt the chain go slack, heard a rattling of gears, and pulled my head from the hatch quick enough to see the thick metal plate go flying down past the hatch door. It dropped like a lead weight and was dragging the chain with it. The gears were turning at a breakneck speed.

I heard a clanging rising up through the tower well. The rush of air coming from the hatch door opening felt like a propellor’s draft.

A platform whizzed upward past the open hatch like a dumbwaiter rocketing to the stars, straight through the tower. I could barely make out what was on it. It didn’t matter because it didn’t stay in the tower for long.

A metallic object erupted through the top of the tower and launched straight up into the sky. Its luster glinted in the sunlight until I lost it completely in the sun’s halo.

I shielded my eyes, dropped to the ground, and covered my head.

When I was 12, I took a line drive from a baseball. It buried itself into my stomach. I had a bruise for two weeks.

That’s all I could think about in the moments before I felt cold metal drill into the back of my neck and rattle my brain.

I couldn’t see, but I could hear when I came to, still dizzy. I could hear Wesley.

“We have to put him in the Brookhaven wheat chamber,” Wesley said. “It’s the only freezer that’s prepped.”

“It’s meant for seeds, not people” another man said. “He’ll die if you put him in there.”

I didn’t recognize the voice.

“He’ll die if we don’t put him in there,” Wesley said. “He had the cobalt slug resting against his head.”

“For how long?” the other man said.

“Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. I found him like that.”

“At those time frames, the damage from the radiation is already done. A deep freeze isn’t going to save him.”

“It will buy him time. That’s all he has now.”

I felt myself being lifted, then a hard metal table against my back.

I heard a door latch, then silence.

I felt the cold permeate my bones like a thousand icy blades.

Was this dying?

Why was it so cold?

I woke to the sound of gas escaping, like a pressure relief valve on full throttle. The metal table beneath me rattled along in movement before reaching a dead stop. The metal was cold, but I was warm again. I opened my eyes to bright lights.

“It’s a miracle,” a voice said.

Standing over me, as I stared up at the ceiling, was an elderly man with white hair and thick glasses. He wore a white lab coat with a plastic name badge. At the top of the badge read: Brookhaven National Laboratory. Beneath it read: Dr. Kyle Wesley.

The name was familiar.

I tried to speak, but there was phlegm in my throat. I lifted my head, coughed it up, and felt it spill out over my chin. I wiped it away with the sleeve of my shirt.

I forced myself into a sitting position and surveyed my surroundings. It looked like a morgue, and not a good one. The wall behind me was lined with square-shaped, latched metal doors, three rows tall and about ten across. Each door was no more than two feet tall and three feet wide. It was the same on the opposite wall. Nothing but latched doors. Between them were a series of blacktop lab benches and stools.

I was sitting on a metal table extending out past one of the square doors. It was open. Through the doorway behind me was a deep cavity recessed into the wall like a coffin. Morgue was about on point.

“Do you recognize me?” the old man said.

I didn’t need to recognize him. The name badge said it all. And yet, I couldn’t believe it.

“You can’t be him,” I said. “The last time I saw him…”

“I was young,” Wesley said. “That was 1952. This is 2019. I should say that you’re looking well for your age. I might say the same for myself, all things considered.”

“What happened?” I said, flopping my legs off the table and trying to stand. It was a dumb move. I knew it when my knees struck the floor, and my hands broke my fall.

“Careful,” Wesley said, helping me to my feet. “Please, have a seat. You don’t have much time here.”

Wesley led me to a metal stool and helped me to sit. I set my forearms on the lab bench in front of me, bracing myself. He sat down in a swivel chair and rested a walking cane across his lap. Even with the cane, he was in better shape than me at the moment.

“What do you mean?” I said, feeling lost for breath. “I’ve got plenty of time. I’m still young.”

“I found you in the field. You had been knocked unconscious. The cobalt slug that we used for the gamma ray garden landed on you. I found it leaning against your head.”

“So what? I’m alive now, aren’t I?”

“You are, but not for long. The cobalt-60 in the slug is radioactive. I don’t know how long you were exposed for, but it may prove to be a lethal dose. That’s why I made the decision to freeze you here at this seed vault. We never did find the right mutation for our Brookhaven wheat, and so here you stayed in its storage drawer.”

Wesley pushed in the metal table with the tip of his cane and used the crook to close the latched door. The label on the door read: Brookhaven Wheat.

Wesley continued. “I had hoped that time would provide a solution to your tissue damage, but time hasn’t been kind in that way. It’s still irreversible. You can’t be saved.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I’m right here. I feel fine.”

“It takes time for cells to die. It will come, but I don’t know when or how severe it will be.”

“If I’m still dying, then why the hell did you wake me up? Can’t you put me back? I’ll wait. I’ve got time. Maybe another 50 years might make a difference.”

“We don’t have another 50 years. Federal funding has been cut, and this facility is being decommissioned. The seed collections that we’ve stored here are being transferred to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard. Everything else has already been removed. I’ve worked here well past my retirement, hoping that I could help you, but time has run out on both of us. All that we have now is the little life remaining in us. For me, I have a couple months at best.”

“And for me?” I said.

“A couple hours, maybe,” Wesley said. “I don’t know.”

“So, what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and die?”

“Might as well live while you can.”

“For a few hours?”

“It’s what you’ve got.”

“Can you get me to Queens? I grew up in Queens.”

“The commute isn’t on your side.”

“Where can you get me?”

“Port Jefferson’s nice.”

“Good,” I said, standing up and finding my footing. “Let’s get going.”

Wesley led me out of the bunker, across a field, and to a concrete lot full of what were undeniably cars. They didn’t have the curves or the style that I had known, but they still had four wheels, two headlights, and a windshield. I thought I’d be amazed by them. But, even after the ten-minute drive in Wesley’s Ford, the only improvement above the 50s models seemed to be the air conditioning.

We pulled into a parking lot off Main and Broadway, and I rolled down my window. I could smell the ocean. I looked up at the sky. There was still daylight. There was still time.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Wesley said. “Maybe you’d like to see what the world’s become, at least locally.”

“Any surprises I should know about?” I said, rolling up my window.

“Did you ever read Orwell’s 1984?”

“I skimmed it… once.”

“The world is nothing like that. People have a tendency to overestimate the future. The future always ends up more mundane than people predict it to be. I had hoped for a future like I saw in the Flash Gordon serials.”

I smiled at that. “I would have been happy with King of the Rocket Men,” I said. “I didn’t have the eyesight to become a pilot. That’s why I became a mechanic. Second best thing.”

“We still don’t have decent rocket packs in case you’re wondering,” Wesley said. “Progress marches a lot slower than I think anyone wants to acknowledge. Seven decades later, and people are still people. Cars are still cars. Levi’s are still blue. I think you’ll feel more at home here than you realize.”

I nodded, but I still hadn’t really seen anything other than a couple highways and a few stretches of forest.

“We should get going then,” Wesley said. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starved,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding. My stomach was growling.

“There’s a great seafood place down the block."

“How about a burger and a chocolate shake."

“Sure thing,” Wesley said, swinging open the driver side door. “We can go to Ruby’s.”

Wesley left his white lab coat in the car but took his walking cane with him.

Stepping out of the car, I almost wished I had a cane myself. My knees were aching, and I was feeling a type of exhaustion that was new to me.

“It’s not too far,” Wesley said, pointing down Main Street.

There were shops with wood paneled facades and restaurants with colorful awnings running up and down both sides of the street. And there were people. And there were T-shirts. T-shirts on men and women and children. Suddenly, everyone was Brando from Streetcar.

“Do the suits come out in wintertime?” I asked. “And the skirts? The hats?”

“Clothing isn’t as formal as it used to be,” Wesley said.

“It didn’t feel formal,” I said. “It just felt… normal.”

“It always does when you’re living it.”

Walking down the street, I was almost glad to be wearing my Levi’s and flannel button down shirt from Sears. I didn’t feel out of place.

“Do you see those black rectangles that everyone’s holding,” Wesley said.

“Yeah,” I said. I had seen them, but I was hesitant to ask.

“Those are telephones,” Wesley said, pulling a similar shiny black rectangle out of his pants pocket and waving it in front of my face. “They make them in wristwatches as well.”

“Like Dick Tracy?” I said, staring at my own wrist and wishing that the technology had come sooner. The wartime radios were 5 pounds if you got a good one. They were 40 pounds if you didn’t.

“It’s hard to believe isn’t it?” Wesley said, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “And yet, maybe we take things like that for granted these days.”

“And radar?” I said. “Surely, that must be better. I mean, if we had better radar, I can’t even imagine how different the war would have been.”

“We did the best with what we had,” Wesley said. “Everyone did. No one knew any different. It’s like a fog we live in. All we can see is what’s right in front of us. And all we can do is take the next step forward without the benefit of hindsight.”

“And what would that next step be?” I said.

“It’s through this door,” Wesley said, tapping his foot on a doormat beneath a red and white striped awning. The glass window set into the front door of the building read: Ruby’s.

“Let’s go get that burger,” Wesley said.

He opened the door and I stepped through.

The floor of the restaurant was checkered in black and white tile. The front counter sparkled in red and chrome against the glow of pink neon lights. Bill Haley’s Rock the Joint was playing on a jukebox in the corner advertising only a nickel a play.

I couldn’t stop the tears that had started.

The world had changed, but it hadn’t.

It still felt like home.

Modern love is automatic. -A Flock of Seagulls

“One crate?” Francis said, eyeing up the wooden box. “One crate? We always transport them in two.”

The museum gallery was empty except for a singular crate, an iron and wood park bench elevated on a raised platform, and two mannequin-like figures sitting on the bench. Neither had hair, neither had a face, but they were lovers all the same.

The figure on the right was dressed in a pair of high-waisted white pants, knee-high black riding boots, and a blue overcoat with it tails hanging down over the bench seat. The one on the left was wearing a plush violet dress with puffed shoulders and white lace trim. The hem of the dress draped down all the way to the floor. Both mannequins had their hands resting squarely in laps. It looked like a simple man and woman sitting on a bench, minding their own business.

“What’s the problem?” Hank said, removing his baseball cap and wiping the sweat from his forehead. His shirt was soaked from heavy lifting, and his smell was no better. His hat read: Haymarket Shipping and Transport.

“It’s a single display piece, but it doesn’t travel that way,” Francis said, pointing at the bench and drawing a line with his finger between the two mannequin-like figures. “The bench separates into two pieces, and it needs to travel that way. It’s a very delicate machine.”

“It doesn’t look like a machine,” Hank said, squinting at the figures on the bent. “Where’d this thing come from?”

“This is an automaton,” Francis said. “Specifically, it’s a pair of automatons whose gears work in conjunction when the pieces are connected. It was found abandoned behind the Gothic Hall in London after an exhibition in 1826. By all accounts, it was never shown, and no one knows who created.”

Hank squatted down and read the small placard affixed to the platform upon which the bench sat. The placard read: Modern Love presented by Francis Bruster, Premier Watchmaker, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

“It says here that Francis Bruster created it,” Hank said, looking up at Francis.

“I’m Francis Bruster,” Francis said. “I’m simply presenting it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I travel with it and keep it in working order. Like I said, it’s a very delicate machine. If it breaks under my care, it’s my career on the line. That’s why one crate simply will not do. The two pieces always travel separately to prevent damage to their mechanism.”

“It’s only traveling from Chicago to Milwaukee,” Hank said. He pulled a shipping manifest from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He waved it at Francis. “It’s only 90 miles. It shouldn’t be more than an hour and a half, max. We’ll separate the pieces, bubble wrap them individually, and fit them in the crate. I’ve worked this route a hundred times over. It’s no biggie. You can even ride shotgun with me if you’re that worried about it.”

Francis pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest pocket and looked at it. Time was not on his side. He couldn’t help but concede. He had no choice. All the other installations had been removed from the gallery and were probably loaded into the trailer by now. There was no point in delaying the operation.

“All right,” Francis said with a sigh. “I’ll need to separate them.”

“Um,” Hank said. “Before you do that, can I see this machine work?”

“Why do you need to see it work?”

“For these sorts of shipments, where damage can occur, we need to certify that everything works prior to the shipment. We’ve seen a lot of fraud with the museum crowd, claiming that items were broken in transit when they were already broken pre-shipment. I’ve been burned myself. So, if you could just flip it on, we can get on with the packing.”

“As you wish,” Francis said, stepping up onto the platform that held the bench. He leaned over the bench, gave a few cranks to a wind-up key on the backside, and let it go.

A heavy sound of ticking resonated from inside the two automatons, and their bodies began to vibrate. The man’s head turned toward the woman. The woman’s head turned toward the man. They both leaned in, and they kissed. All the while, their hands seemed to shake uncontrollably with a violent rattle.

“That’s it?” Hank said, rubbing the back of his neck. “A bit tame, isn’t it? With the way they were vibrating, I thought they’d be getting a lot more handsy.”

“There are locking gears,” Francis said, placing a hand on the male automaton’s shoulder. “They’re nickel-plated gears that limit the movement of other brass gears, especially in the arms and legs. The way these two are built, they couldn’t get handsy if they wanted to; not without breaking a few gears in the process.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun,” Hank said. “Maybe they’d like to bust a few gears.”

“This set of automatons dates to at least 1826,” Francis said. “A kiss on a public bench would have been more than a little scandalous. Some speculate that it’s the very reason why these automatons were not admitted to the Gothic Hall exhibition. It’s a shame that they were just abandoned the way they were. Their imagery was just ahead of its time. That’s why it was separated and auctioned off as two separate pieces to two different buyers in 1827. It’s taken nearly two centuries for the two halves to be reunited so that they could be exhibited as a working display piece. They simply don’t work in isolation.”

“And you don’t want to ship it as one piece?”

“The gears between the pieces fit together very intricately,” Francis said, pointing to a wide metal gear box barely visible beneath the bench seat. “If the piece were to be jostled in transit, it could warp the gears at the junction. They need to travel separately, disconnected, even if it is in a single crate. It may not be ideal, but we do need to separate them.”

“You got it, boss,” Hank said. “I’ll go get the bubble wrap.”

While Hank was away at his truck, Francis took the initiative to separate the two automatons before he returned. He also grabbed a broom from the janitor’s closet on the far side of the gallery and proceeded to sweep out the shipping crate. It was surprisingly dusty. When he was done, the crate was clean, and it and empty.

Hank returned with a large red toolbox hanging from one arm and a thick roll of bubble wrap under the other. “If you want to wrap the pieces, I’ll prep the crate,” he said.

Francis took the bubble wrap and watched as Hank pulled a cordless driver from his toolbox. Within an hour’s time, the two automatons were wrapped separately, tucked away in the crate, and Hank was putting the final screws into the crate’s side panel. They were locked, sealed, and secure.

“Snug as a bug,” Hank said. “Let’s wheel this back to my trailer, and we can hit the road. You still want to ride shotgun?”

“Fine,” Francis said. It was going to be a long 90 minutes on the road, and Francis wasn’t going to let the crate leave his vicinity.

Just shy of 90 minutes down the highway, Hank’s trailer was backing-in to the loading zone of the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee. Francis was on pins and needles the whole ride. Every bump, every stop, and every bit of acceleration made him nervous. He could have sworn that he heard ticking coming from the trailer as they drove, but it might very well have been the sound of his own heart beating out of his chest.

When Hank came to a stop and turned off the engine of his truck, Francis took the opportunity to swing open his door and hop down to the ground. “Can you open the trailer?” he called up to Hank.

Hank was in the process of filling-out a road log. “Hold your horses,” he said. “We can’t unload the trailer until the forklift operator comes around. Why don’t you go inside and tell them we’ve arrived? It’ll speed up the process.”

“Fine,” Francis said, feeling impatient. The whole situation made him nervous.

One crate, he thought. One crate. Should have been two.

Francis went inside, alerted the front desk of their arrival, and made his way to the back entrance where the museum’s receiving bay was located.

It felt like an eternity waiting for Hank to bring the crate around. Nearly ten minutes passed before Hank rolled in with the crate on a pallet jack. A red toolbox rested on top of the crate.

“Open it up,” Francis said. “Please, open it up.”

“Alright,” Hank said, holding his hands up defensively. “Don’t worry. The ride was as smooth as they get.”

Hank pulled his cordless driver from the red toolbox and went to work removing the screws that held on the side panel.

When the side panel dropped to the floor, so did Francis’s jaw.

Inside the crate were the two automatons, but not as Francis had last seen them.

The bubble wrap that he had carefully arranged around the two separate pieces now lay in a heap on the floor of the crate. Mixed amongst the tangle of bubble wrap was a violet dress, a white pair of pants, two black riding boots, and a blue overcoat.

The figures themselves wore nothing. Not a stitch remained between them.

“What did you do?” Francis said, pointing a finger at Hank. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Hank said, staring blankly into the crate. “The crate’s been sealed up since we left. You saw me seal it. You saw me load it.”

Francis couldn’t argue. “Just help me get them out of there,” he said.

Francis squeezed into the back of the crate to push as Hank pulled from the front. The two automatons and their bench slid out of the crate as one single, connected piece.

“They’re reconnected,” Francis said, dumbfounded. “That’s impossible.”

“And they’re looking pretty handsy,” Hank said with a smirk.

Without the clothes, the male and female figures looked about the same. Although their heads were carved from wood, their bodies exposed a maze-like fixture of gears beneath a minimal skeletal framework of brass slats and rivets.

What was most unusual was their posture. No longer were their hands in their laps.

The male figure had one hand on the female’s thigh and one hand on her stomach. The female figure had one hand on the male’s chest and one hand behind his neck.

“They shouldn’t be able to move like this,” Francis said, looking the figures over from top to bottom. “Not unless their locking gears have been removed.”

The gear box beneath the bench seat was intact, but the wind-up key on the backside of the bench was missing.

“The key’s missing,” Francis said. “It’s got to be somewhere in the crate.”

Hank reached into the crate and pulled out two tangles of bubble wrap. He flapped each in turn. “Nothing here,” he said.

Francis pulled out the pants, the boots, and the overcoat. He checked the pockets and shook the boots, but there was nothing to be found.

“Hold these,” Francis said, handing Hank the set of clothes from the male figure.

That only left the violet dress.

Francis lifted the dress from the floor of the crate to find a small set of connected gears and posts. The gears were all nickel-plated.

One of the central gears connected to a spring, and that spring connected to a post that connected to the missing wind-up key. It looked like a small wind-up toy.

Francis picked up the toy, and the wind-up key started turning. The gears started moving. Two small posts began kicking like short little legs. Another two flapped up and down like wayward arms.

“What is it?” Hank said.

“It’s made of the nickel-plated locking gears,” Francis said, feeling the ticking machine come alive in the palm of his hand. The gears must have been removed from the two automatons. That’s why they could move the way they did, locking in embrace.

“And where did it come from?” Hank said, looking back at the crate.

Francis cradled the tiny geared machine between his two hands and set it gently on the bench between the two figures. “Conception,” he said.

“And what about them?” Hank said, eyeing the embrace of the two figures on the bench.

Francis couldn't help but smile. “In flagrante delicto.”

Bark beetles are tiny insects with hard, cylindrical bodies that reproduce under the bark of trees. -US Forest Service

“Right this way,” the woman said. She wore a white lab coat over colorful scrubs.

It was all so unfamiliar.

Hygienist? Technician? Assistant? I didn’t know what to call her.

“In here,” the woman said, gesturing toward a small room with a reclined dental chair. “My name’s Holly, by the way.”

“Should I just have a seat?” I said, unsure if the basic rules still applied.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Have a seat, and Dr. Chambers will be in shortly.”

“Okay,” I said, passing through the doorway and sliding into the chair.

Holly reclined the chair further, and I couldn’t stop myself from gripping the armrests. I felt like an astronaut ready for launch but twice as nervous.

“I’ll be back soon to administer the anesthesia,” Holly said. She looked down at my white knuckles fastened to the armrests of the chair. “There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll be out like a light when it happens.”

I nodded and released the armrests. “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just jitters.”

“It happens to everyone,” Holly said. “Just remember to breathe. You won’t even know what happened.”

She smiled again and left the room.

Nobody is ever ready to have their wisdom teeth removed. You build up years of familiarity with your dentist and their office only to be shuttled off to a different dentist and a different office for surgery. Everything is new. Everything is scary.

“Well, look who we have here,” Dr. Chambers said, stepping into the room. “Let’s have a look at those teeth.”

I didn’t say a word. I just opened my mouth.

“My records show that you were referred to this office by Dr. Warner,” Dr. Chambers said, flipping on the overhead light and angling it into my mouth.

“Yes,” I mumbled, still holding my mouth open.

“A little old, aren’t you,” Dr. Chambers said, grabbing my chin and stretching my mouth open further. “Does he still call you kiddo?”

I couldn’t answer with my jaw in his grip, but it was true. All of it. I wasn’t exactly a kiddo, but that’s what Dr. Warner called everyone, because all but one of his patients were kids. He was a children’s dentist, and I had already aged out of children’s dentistry. But he was familiar, he was friendly, and he was a saint for letting me continue to see him, even into my twenties.

“You might want to consider a new dentist,” Dr. Chambers said, inserting a stainless-steel probe into my mouth.

I could feel him poking at my wisdom teeth with its tip. I could have sworn I felt them tremble within my jaw.

He removed the probe. “Adult teeth are very different from children’s teeth,” Dr. Chambers said. “Very different needs. But you won’t need to worry about these wisdom teeth anymore. Best to get them removed when you’re young. They only get more stubborn with time. Honestly, if you wait too long, they’ll simply refuse to leave.”

“I’ve heard that,” I said, wiping a drip of saliva that was spilling down over my chin. “It’s weird how they just come out of nowhere and cause nothing but problems.”

“It’s just part of development,” Dr. Chambers said. “They grow, they mature, and they run out of room. It’s in everybody’s interest to have them extracted before they take over. Got to leave the nest at some point.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I said, feeling myself grip the armrests again.

“Well, I think we’re ready to get started. I’ll call Holly in here, and she can administer the sedation anesthesia.”

Dr. Chambers left, and Holly came back in alone. She was wheeling an IV drip that traced down to a needle in her hand.

Holly pulled a long rubber band from the pocket of her white lab coat. “I’ll need your right arm, please,” she said.

I released the armrest and turned my forearm palm-up, exposing the veins along the inside of my right elbow.

“Don’t worry,” Holly said, rubbing her thumb across the skin of my inner forearm. “This shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m just going to tie this band around your arm so we can find a good vein.”

I tried my best to keep myself from shaking as she tied the band around my arm. I knew what was coming next.

Holly ripped open an alcohol swab and cleaned the inside of my forearm. “I’m going to insert the IV now,” she said.

I nodded, feeling my arm tense.

Holly pulled the plastic cap from the needle, slid the point into my arm, and spoke softly. “Count back from ten,” she said.

I was already feeling hazy.

“Ten… nine… eight…” I said.

The next number wouldn’t come. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I couldn’t move my tongue. Everything was going dark.

With my eyes closed and my senses dulled, I could have sworn I heard Dr. Chambers speak. “Call the movers,” I’m sure he said.

I opened my eyes.

“You’re awake,” Dr. Chambers said. “Good.”

I recognized his voice, but my vision was blurry. I wanted to ask whether the procedure was over, but my lips wouldn’t move. I blinked my eyes, and the room came into focus.

Where am I? I thought.

I tried to move my body, but I couldn’t. I was numb all over. Only my eyes were free.

The ceiling was different. The walls were different. It wasn’t Dr. Chambers’s office. It looked more like a laboratory. It had black countertops, industrial-size refrigerators, and an assortment of boxy equipment that I simply didn’t recognize. What I noticed most of all was the heat. It felt like an oven.

Dr. Chambers sat on a stool at my side as I reclined in a familiar-shaped dental chair. Between us was a rolling stainless-steel table with a tiny plastic tray on it. It looked like a miniature egg carton with four compartments. Instead of eggs, it held teeth. Four teeth.

“No, we’re not in my office, if that's what you're thinking,” Dr. Chambers said, looking around the space. “The temperature there is all wrong for incubation. Don’t worry. We’re just a few miles down the road. You were transported with the utmost care, so as to not disturb the young.”

I tried to scream, but no sound left my throat.

“You should be proud,” Dr. Chambers said. “Look what you’ve created; what I pulled out of you.” He picked up the plastic tray of teeth and held it up to my face. “You did this. New life.” He set the tray back down.

I didn’t understand.

“Dr. Warner and I have had a good relationship over the years. Our kind are seldom known for collaboration, but it works for us. He plants the seeds when you’re young, and I extract them after they've grown.”

I was starting to sweat. Part of it was the heat in the room. Most of it was nerves.

“Have you ever heard of bark beetles?” Dr. Chambers said.

I hadn’t, but I blinked furiously anyway. It was all I could do.

Dr. Chambers smiled. “You probably wouldn’t want to know anyway. Suffice it to say that you are the bark, and these are the beetles. Not literally, of course. These are no beetles. But they needed extraction all the same. It’s always a little too messy to leave them in, especially when they’re ready to hatch.”

The tiny plastic tray began to shake, and the seemingly hard enamel on the teeth began to flake away.

“They sound hungry,” Dr. Chambers said. “But… they’re always hungry.”

I felt my chair recline, and my eyes drifted up toward the ceiling.

I could barely see it when Dr. Chambers placed the plastic tray on my chest. It was rattling.

“It’s not so bad,” Dr. Chambers said. “When they enter the brain, you’ll barely feel it. They’re quick to sever the appropriate nerves. After that, it’s pure bliss. That is, if they like you.”

Dr. Chambers stood up and dug his fingers into the flesh beneath his own jaw.

“Children are so important,” he said, starting to peel a rubbery mask of skin from his face. “You always have to put them first. And if they refuse to finish their dinner, then it’s my job to take care of the leftovers.”

“Well, look at you,” Alison said, dusting off the black Tolex travel case.

She picked it up by its handle and moved it over toward the round attic window where there was more light. It was certainly heavy.

She set it down on top of a large cardboard moving box, and the cardboard lid nearly caved. She picked it up again and moved it to the floor.

A small metal plate adorned the side of the case. It read Royal.

“Sounds expensive,” Alison said.

It felt expensive. It had to be at least as valuable as a bowling ball.

Alison blew away the remaining dust on the top of the case and flipped the latches. She could smell the profit already. She lifted the lid.

“A typewriter,” Alison said with a sigh.

It was disappointing to say the least, but she wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t the first piece of junk that she had found in her grandmother’s attic. She had been cleaning out the house for weeks now, and the attic was the final space to be cleared. Then the house could be sold.

Most of the furniture was already gone except for a couple of beds, dressers, tables, and chairs for staging. The appliances could stay. The closets had been emptied, and the clothes had been divided between Alison and her mother. Alison’s grandmother had a classic wardrobe, and the classics never go out of style.

Alison flipped the lid of the travel case all the way open. On the lid were several pieces of thick masking tape. Written on them, in her grandmother’s handwriting, were only a few words. DO NOT SELL. DO NOT GIVE AWAY. DO NOT REPAIR.

Well, that sealed the deal. Whatever profit Alison hoped to get out of the vintage-looking typewriter was vanishing before her eyes. The typewriter was now a paperweight, a very heavy paperweight.

Alison took out her cellphone and dialed her mom.

“Hey, Alison,” her mom said when she answered the call. “How’s the cleaning coming along?”

“I’m up in the attic right now,” Alison said. “There’s a typewriter up here. Know anything about it?”

“No, Sweetie. Should I?”

“I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s a Royal typewriter, and it looks old. Might be worth something, but there’s a message inside the typewriter’s case that looks like it was written by Grandma. It just says do not sell, do not give away, do not repair. What do you think we should do about it?”

“Well, I guess we keep it. Does it look broken?”

“No,” Alison said, looking the typewriter over from top to bottom. “It’s not missing any keys or anything. All the letters are there. I guess it could have some internal problems. It’s not like I’m going to be typing on it. I’m guessing that you’re not either.”

“So, whose closet is it going to be living in, then?”

“Mine, I guess,” Alison said, closing the lid of the typewriter case with her free hand. “It’ll end up with me eventually. I might as well resign myself to it now.”

“Fine with me. How many more nights are you going to be spending there?”

“I can probably be wrapped up in two. Then I can load up the van and start the long drive home, my new heavy typewriter friend in tow.”

“Glad to hear it. Maybe I’ll drop by tomorrow morning to help finish up. Then we can start talking to the realtor about getting the house listed. I loved that place, but I don’t think I can love it anymore without your grandmother in it.”

“I feel the same,” Alison said. “Talk to you soon, okay.”

“Okay. Love you. Bye.”

Alison ended the call and slipped the cellphone into her pocket.

She grabbed the travel case handle with both hands, carried it down to the kitchen, and set it on the kitchen table. Her arms were ready to fall off.

She had resolved to toss the old typewriter into a closet and forget about it forever, but her grandmother’s message had caught her interest.

Alison sat down at the table, flipped the latches on the case, and lifted the lid. She honestly didn’t know much about typewriters other than the fact that they had keys like a computer keyboard and that they only used paper.

There was a round knob on the right side of the typewriter that connected to a roller along the top. Alison gave the knob a few turns. To her surprise, a torn scrap of paper came feeding out. She gave the knob a couple more turns, and the scrap of paper came loose. It was wrinkled.

“A paper jam?” Alison said, shrugging.

She smoothed out the wrinkles against the flat surface of the tabletop. The scrap was mostly blank except for a single line of letters printed across it. It read: PL S F X M .

“Definitely looks broken,” Alison said.

If this was supposed to be a coherent sentence, then some of the letters clearly weren’t working. She couldn’t help but wonder whether her grandmother had typed it. Who else would have?

On the countertop in the kitchen was a single sheet of pink paper. It was a mock-up of the flyer they were going to use to sell the house soon enough. It was arguably the only piece of paper left in the house, other than the crumpled scrap that Alison had already pulled out. She slipped the pink sheet of paper into the back of the typewriter, turned the knob on the side, and watched the paper be consumed. A couple more turns and it emerged again, this time coming out the top.

“Looks correct… I guess,” Alison said.

With the paper queued up, Alison went through the entire set of keys, pressing each one in turn. Nearly all of them seemed to work. The only ones that didn’t were the vowels. No matter how hard she pressed the keys, she couldn’t type an A, E, I, O, or U.

When Alison pressed the other keys, little metal arms swung upward to type the letters. For the vowels, no arms swung up at all.

Alison looked down into the recesses of the typewriter to find that there were in fact a few of the little metal arms missing, leaving gaps like missing teeth.

“Missing pieces, huh,” Alison said, scratching the back of her head.

Would restoring missing pieces be the same as fixing the typewriter, she couldn’t help thinking to herself. All she would be doing would be making the typewriter whole again, and what was wrong with that?

She stared down at the random letters on the wrinkled scrap of paper. If it was a message, it must surely be missing its vowels.

She thought long and hard about what it might say, and she couldn’t help but wonder whether the message was for her. She couldn’t help but wonder whether the message was supposed to be PLEASE FIX ME.

Alison had loved her grandmother. She had loved everything about her, and it saddened her to think that the typewriter was just going to sit in a closet and never be used. Not that Alison had a use for a typewriter, but she could find one, even if it was just for addressing envelopes.

Her mind was settled. She was going to have it fixed.

Alison closed the travel case, tossed it into her van, and headed across town. She had found a listing for a typewriter and sewing machine repair shop that could probably help her. She really didn’t want to see the poor machine go to waste.

Alison opened the door to Fred’s Type and Sew, and a bell rang above her head announcing her arrival.

She lugged the heavy typewriter case across the repair shop, passing by display pieces of foot-powered sewing machines and tiered shelves of antique typewriters that looked like they’d be murder on the fingers.

A thin man in a gray houndstooth vest emerged from behind a curtain and slipped on a pair of glasses with thick lenses. He looked about as old as the typewriter that Alison was carrying. A name badge pinned to his vest read Fred Platen.

“Hi there!” Alison said, walking up to the front counter. “I found your shop in the phonebook. I’m Alison. I have an old Royal typewriter that looks like it’s missing a few pieces. I was wondering if you could help me.”

The man smiled. “Sure thing,” he said. “My name’s Fred. If you could just set it up on the counter here, we can have a look at it.”

Alison hoisted the typewriter case onto the counter and gave it a spin so that the handle faced toward Fred. “It’s all yours,” she said. “I noticed that a few of the little metal arms that strike the paper were missing. I don’t actually know what they’re called.”

“Typebars,” Fred said, “but you don’t necessarily need to know that to enjoy a good typewriter.” He smiled again.

“Well, it’s missing a few typebars. It seems to be only the vowels.”

“Let’s have a look then,” Fred said, flipping the latches and lifting the lid of the case. “Well, here’s a problem.” He turned the case around and pointed at the rows of masking tape inside the lid that read DO NOT SELL. DO NOT GIVE AWAY. DO NOT REPAIR.

“Oh, that” Alison said, feeling more than a little embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it. The typewriter belonged to my grandmother, but she passed. I don’t think of this as repairing it. It’s more like restoring it.”

“Fair enough,” Fred said.

“See the paper in there,” Alison said, pointing at the pink sheet still fed into the typewriter. “All the letters but the vowels.”

Fred pressed his face in close to the typebar cavity of the typewriter. “Yup. Just missing a few typebars. Luckily, Royals like this are a dime a dozen, and I’ve got boxes full of old typebars that I’ve picked-up over the years. If you’d like to wait, I can get this old beauty back into working shape in no time.”

“Sure thing,” Alison said. “That’d be great.”

No more than twenty minutes later and Fred was back with the typewriter cradled in his arms. A new sheet of crisp white paper had been fed into its roller. “Good as new,” he said. “I tested it in the back, and A, E, I, O, and U are all accounted for.”

“Thanks so much,” Alison said. “What do I owe you?”

“Free of charge,” Fred said.

“Really, why?”

“This used to belong to Gladys Weaver.”

“Gladys Weaver was my grandmother. How did you know it belonged to her?”

“Well, there’s a label on the bottom of the typewriter that says, if found, to return it to Gladys Weaver. It’s even got a phone number on there.”

“Oh, I see. Did you know her?”

“Not really," Fred said, shaking his head. "She brought in a typewriter quite a few years back. She was having issues with it. She said it was typing on its own. You don’t forget a thing like that. I told her that was impossible because this is a manual typewriter. It doesn’t type without fingers pushing the keys. I suppose she thought it had some sort of wind-up gears like a watch. I wish I could have done more for her. I didn’t even put a piece of paper in it at the time, but there wasn’t anything to fix. Generally, it’s my job to keep typewriters typing, not stop them from typing.”

“I wonder what she was using the typewriter for.”

“Whatever it was, she must have been typing pretty hard to lose that many typebars. Looked almost like they were broken off.”

“Broken off? Like somebody pried them out?”

“Hard to think that someone would willfully break them off. Certainly, not on a gem like this one. But weirder things have happened. Nobody seems to value the classics anymore.”

“Well, thank you,” Alison said.

Fred reached beneath the counter and pulled out a few additional sheets of white paper. They matched the one that he had already loaded into the typewriter. “Here, take these,” he said. “See if you like them.”

“Uh, thank you,” Alison said, taking the sheets.

“And, if you really want to thank me, and you really like the paper, come back and I’ll sell you some more. I can get you a great deal.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Alison said.

By the time Alison returned to her grandmother’s house, the sun had gone down, and she was exhausted. She hauled the typewriter into the kitchen once again, flipped the latches, and opened the lid. It really was a beautiful thing. She lifted the typewriter and set it flat on the kitchen table. Maybe she’d leave it out on the table for the open house. At a minimum, it was a conversation piece.

Alison downed some leftovers from the refrigerator, took a quick shower, and headed off to bed. She really was exhausted, and the work would continue tomorrow. Maybe her mom would drop by. That’s be nice.

For the weeks that she spent cleaning-out her grandmother’s house, Alison never slept in her grandmother’s room at the end of the hall. It was a little to spooky for her. Instead, she slept in her mother’s childhood bedroom. The first night that she spent in the bedroom, it was dressed wall-to-wall with her mother’s childhood possessions. She had even found an old photo album. Now, weeks into the clean-out, there was only a bed, a dresser, and a mirror. At least there were still sheets, a pillow, and a couple of warm blankets for comfort.

Alison closed her eyes, pulled the blankets up to her chin, and was out in an instant.

She awoke to the sound of typing.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

“Am I dreaming?” Alison mumbled to herself. “Maybe?”

She listened again for the sounds, but there was only silence. She could have sworn that she heard typing. She pulled the blankets all the way up and over her head and went back to sleep.

Alison opened her eyes, awake again. The sound of typing was echoing down the hall.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

It wasn’t a dream. The sound was real.

Alison shrugged off the blankets, kicked out her legs, and sat up on the edge of the bed. She rubbed at her eyes. She wasn’t dreaming. She could still hear the sound.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

Alison stood up, walked over to the bedroom door, and pressed her ear against it.

The sound had stopped. It was pure silence.

She turned the knob, opened the door slowly without a creak, and looked down the hallway toward the kitchen. The house was dark except for a few hints of light coming from a window down the hall in her grandmother’s bedroom and an arc of light coming from the other end of the hall, near the kitchen.

Alison tiptoed down the hallway and peered around the corner. Moonlight streamed in through the kitchen window. There was nothing there and no one there. It was only the typewriter on the table and the sheets of paper that Fred had given her.

She approached the table cautiously.

She picked up the sheets of paper and fanned them out on the table. There were three.

She walked around to the head of the table and looked at the typewriter. There was a message typed out on the paper.

Alison woke up to the sound of typing.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

It wasn’t a dream. The sound was real.

She slid out of bed and walked over to the door. She pressed her ear against it but couldn’t hear a sound. It was silence.

Alison opened the door, walked down the hallway, and passed into the kitchen.

Moonlight illuminated the kitchen table. Two sheets of paper were fanned out across it.

Two? Alison thought.

She stepped around to the head of the table and looked down at the typewriter. There was a message typed out on the paper.

Alison woke to the sound of typing.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

She was back in her bed. Something wasn’t right here.

“What the hell am I doing here?” Alison said. “I could have sworn I was…”

She could hear the pounding of keys coming from down the hall.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

She was starting to remember, but not really. She remembered waking up to the sound of a typewriter. Once. Twice. Three times, maybe? She remembered walking up to the typewriter. She remembered that a message had been written. She didn’t remember anything else. Only sleep.

What was the typewriter doing to her?

Alison sat up in bed, pushed her back against the headboard, and tucked her knees in. She pulled the blankets up to her chin and sat there shaking.

It was only a moment before she noticed a crinkling sound coming from beneath her. She reached beneath the pillow that she was sitting on and pulled out two crumpled white sheets of paper. Each had typing on them.

The first sheet of paper read: UNLOCK THE FRONT DOOR.

The second sheet of paper read: CALL YOUR MOTHER OVER TO THE HOUSE. TELL HER IT’S AN EMERGENCY. THROW THE PHONE AWAY.

She dropped the papers to the floor.

Alison looked over toward the dresser where she typically plugged-in her phone to charge while she slept. It was missing, and the charging cable was left dangling off the edge of the dresser. What did she do with it?

Alison pushed off the blankets and sat upright. She had to find her phone. She had to call her mother. All the other phones in the house were already packed away.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

The typewriter was going again.

Alison hopped off the bed and scrambled over to the bedroom door. She flung it open and ran down the hall. She turned the corner to find her mother in the kitchen.

There was now only a single sheet of paper on the table.

The typewriter was still typing.

“What’s the emergency, Alison?” her mother said. “And what’s with the typewriter?”

The typing stopped.

Alison’s mother leaned over to see what the typewriter had written.

Her eyes glazed over in an instant. No iris. No pupil. Only pure white emptiness.

Alison raced over to the table, ripped the sheet of paper from the typewriter, and crumpled it up in her hands. She didn’t dare look at it.

Alison’s mother moved over to the counter and pulled a chef’s knife from the block.

The crumpled paper ball fell to the floor as Alison reached out to stop her mother’s arm as it swung down toward her mother’s stomach.

The knife’s tip ripped through her mother’s coat and sank down into her abdomen.

Alison fought with all her strength to keep the knife from going any deeper.

For nearly a minute, Alison’s mother struggled against her. And then she didn’t.

For no reason, and unprovoked, the knife simply fell from her mother’s hand and clattered down onto the tile floor.

Alison looked into her mother’s eyes. The glaze was gone.

“Mom!” Alison shouted. “Mom! Are you okay?”

Her mother’s hands and coat were red with blood.

Alison’s own hands were stained.

“What happened?” her mother said, clutching at the blood stain on her coat.

“We need to get you to the hospital,” Alison said.

Her mother nodded but said no words.

Alison wrapped her arm around her mother’s waist and started walking her toward the front door.

The front door was unlocked, and Alison turned the knob and swung it open. It was dark outside, but the streetlights were on.

She helped her mother down the concrete porch step, across the lawn, and over to the passenger side of the van.

“Dammit, my keys!” Alison said. She had forgot them inside the house, and she couldn’t just leave her mother standing there by herself.

Alison walked her mother around to the driver’s side of the car and sat her down on the cinderblock fence that divided the properties.

“Stay here, Mom,” Alison said. “Stay here and stay awake.”

Her mother nodded. Her eyes weren’t glazed anymore, but they were certainly in shock.

Alison ran back around the front of the van and headed for the porch. Sitting on the concrete slab was a pink sheet of paper that hadn't been there a minute ago. She recognized it immediately. It was the pink flyer for the house listing. She had used it to test the typewriter. It was still in the typewriter when she took it to Fred Platen. He had never given it back to her. It had the house’s address on it.

At the top of the pink page was the string of letters that she had typed, the set that was missing the vowels.

Further down the page was more typing. It was typing that hadn’t been there before. It read: GO TO THE HOUSE OF GLADYS WEAVER TONIGHT. FIND THE TYPEWRITER THERE. TAKE IT INTO THE BACK BEDROOM. BRING A WEAPON.

Alison stepped over the pink sheet of paper and through the front doorway.

She tiptoed through the living room and peered into the kitchen. The typewriter was gone from the table. The final sheet of white paper was also missing.

And yet, she could hear it.

Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack.

The sound was coming from down the hall.

Alison stepped over to the hallway and stared straight down its length.

At the end of the hallway was her grandmother’s bedroom and her grandmother’s bed silhouetted there in the moonlight.

Fred Platen sat on the foot of the bed, and the typewriter sat on his lap. A crisp piece of white paper had been fed into it.

In his left hand were Alison’s keys. In his right hand was an axe.

His eyes were glazed over.

“Get your damn mouth off of that!” I shouted. Damn kids.

The kid had already guzzled a mouthful from the Slurpee machine, and there were no signs of stopping. Blue liquid was flowing down his cheeks.

His mother stopped the conversation she was having on her cellphone and pointed at me. “Don’t you dare talk to my son that way!”

“His mouth is on the damn nozzle,” I said from the register. “We have a health code here.”

The mother grabbed her son by his shirt. “C’mon Aidan,” she said. “We’re leaving.”

As she dragged him toward the door, blue liquid spilled out of his mouth and splashed down onto the tile floor.

“I just mopped that!” I shouted, but the damage had already been done.

The mother stopped at the door. “After the election, things are gonna change,” she said. “People like you will have to go back to your own country.”

She kicked open the door, yanked her son through it, and slammed it behind her.

She was already out of earshot before I could muster a word.

“I was born here,” I said to no one.

My shift at the 7-Eleven was over in twenty minutes, and the boss would be in for the afternoon. If the place wasn’t clean, it would be my ass on the line.

I went into the back, filled the mop bucket, and sighed. Election coverage was running on the 6-inch TV screen that the boss kept in the back for break time. Sit on the dusty folding chair, watch a little TV, and enjoy your 15 minutes of break time freedom. Then back to work. It was the only joy of the day. A break from the monotony of mopping the floors, freshening the hotdogs, and refilling the coffee machine. But it wasn’t break time. It was mop time.

I took the mop in my hand, closed my eyes, and ran my fingers through the filthy strands, thinking, wishing, it was someone, anyone. Eight hours behind the counter, fifty customers, and I was still lonely. My life was going nowhere. Regardless of what the mother had to say about the election, right or wrong, nothing was going to change. Nothing ever changes.

I opened my eyes and stared at the television, wishing that I was worthy enough to be on it. I was old enough to be president. When the hell did my life go so wrong?

I remembered all my days off, sitting on the couch in my slippers, having woken up well past noon. I remembered my robe feeling damp from sweat after doing nothing. I felt so insignificant. I’d wasted so much time, so much life. I felt so powerless.

I wanted power so badly. I wanted to be significant. I wanted to be interesting. I wanted to make a difference to someone, anyone.

I flipped the mop, dropped it in the bucket, and wheeled it out. Duty called.

“I’d like to make a purchase,” a man said from in front of the register. He wore a sleek black suit that matched his slicked back hair.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I’ll be right with you. I just need to—”

I looked down. The floor was clean. The blue Slurpee puddles were gone. But how?

“I took care of it,” the man said. “Consider it a sign of good faith.”

“Thank you,” I said passing behind the counter. “Good faith for what?”

“A transaction,” the man said. “A deal.”

I looked at the counter, but the man had put nothing on it. “What are you looking to buy? Lottery tickets?”

The man smiled. “No, it’s not my lucky day today. It’s yours. I’d like to purchase your soul.”

I laughed. “My soul? It’s really not worth anything. You might have better luck with someone else. With someone who matters.”

“All souls matter,” the man said, pulling a scroll of paper from inside his sleeve. He rolled it out on the counter.

“Who are you, the Devil?”

The man nodded. “Yes, and I can give you what you want. No more mops. No more kids. No more lonely days and nights here. I can give you power. I can make you matter.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” I said. “There are better people to prank than me.”

“No prank. No joke. Just sign and see what happens. What have you got to lose?”

I looked at the scroll, but the text on it was illegible. “I can’t read this,” I said. “What language is this in?”

“My language,” the Devil said. “Don’t worry about the details. You get what you want, and I get what I want. You’ve got a few minutes. The floor’s clean. Test me. Ask me anything.”

“Who will win the election tonight?”

“You,” the Devil said, pulling out a fountain pen from his breast pocket and tapping me on the forehead with it.

I brushed him off. “Bullshit,” I said.

“Go on, sign it,” the Devil said, pressing his fountain pen squarely into my palm.

“And you’ll give me power?”

“Not forever, of course. Nothing lasts forever.” The Devil smiled. “Well, maybe not nothing.” He grabbed my wrist and moved my hand over the contract. “You want power? I’ll give you power. You can rule a nation. You can call the shots. People’s lives will be putty in your hands. So, do it. You want this. You need this. Do it! Do it!!!”

I signed the contract.

“Good,” the Devil said.

In the blink of an eye, he was behind me, behind the counter. He placed his hands over my eyes. “Power is now yours,” he said. “Use it. Wield it. Treasure it. I won’t last forever.”

“How long do I have?” I said, still blinded by his hands.

“Thirty-six hours. Not a second more.”

“Why thirty-six?

“Isn’t it obvious?” The Devil said. “Three times six is…”

“Eighteen?” I said. “Because I work at a 7-Eleven, and seven plus eleven is—”

“No,” the Devil said. “Pay attention now. Three times six is 6… 6… 6.”

“I guess,” I said, shrugging.

“Don’t worry about it," the Devil said. "That’s my job. Your job is to do what you want to do.”

“And what should I do?”

“It’s your life. Enjoy it while you can.”

The Devil’s hands fell away, and I opened my eyes.

“Welcome to power,” the Devil said.

Looking around, I found myself in a round, elegantly dressed room, behind an oak desk. On the desk sat a closed laptop computer.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Don’t you know where you are?” the Devil said. He reached over my shoulder and flicked my chest. There was a metal clank.

I looked down to find myself in a blue pin-striped suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. The metal clank was the sound of a brass name plate affixed to the breast pocket of my blazer. It read PRESIDENT.

I looked over my shoulder to find the Devil himself dressed all in red, in a suit fitting much better than mine. His own brass name plate read VICE PRESIDENT.

“This is power?” I said.

The Devil smiled and stepped to my side. He ran his fingertips across the top of the closed laptop computer. “Open it. Your audience awaits.”

I flipped open the computer and the screen lit up. All it showed was an image of me.

I waved at the computer, and the image of me waved back in unison.

“This is happening?” I asked. “Like, right now, happening?”

“Yes, right now,” the Devil said. “Remember, thirty-six hours. Don’t leave the people waiting. Your nation is watching.”

“But… what do I do?”

“You rule,” the Devil said. “The people bring you their problems and you solve them.”

“How is that power? It just sounds like work.”

“What you say goes. Your word is law. Change the world if you want to.”

“But why do I need to solve other people’s problems? I’ve got enough of my own.”

“Your power is judge, jury, and executioner, and that doesn’t work without people. Give it a try.” The Devil ran a finger along the top of the computer screen. “Ah, I think we have our first life to be changed.”

A white box popped up at the bottom of the screen, and a name and message appeared.

Lucy Wilcox: I’m sick of politicians gaming the system to stay in power. I wish they would all just go.

“So, is she looking for me to set term limits?” I said. “I’m not quite sure what to do with this one.”

“You’re not understanding your power,” the Devil said, pointing at the screen, at the word go. “She wants all politicians to go, so make them go.”

“Am I a politician?” I asked.

“You make the rules.”

I stared at the screen and spoke. “All politicians, minus myself, must--”

The Devil coughed. “Ahem,” he said, tapping his own brass name badge.

“Right,” I said. “All politicians, minus myself and minus you, must go.”

“Where must they go,” the Devil said.

“I don’t care,” I said. “They just need to go. Isn’t that enough?”

The devil dusted his hands. “It’s more than enough. And they’re gone.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” The Devil pointed to the white box at the bottom of the screen, and a flurry of names flashed across it, each one giving thanks. “The people approve.”

“So, they can see me? They can see what we’re doing?”

“Yes, and you’re giving them what they want.” The Devil scratched his chin. “How about another?”

“Well, hold on,” I said, pushing the computer away from me. “How do I know that these things are actually happening?”

“Let me show you,” the Devil said. He placed his hands over my eyes, and everything went dark.

When the Devil peeled back his hands, I opened my eyes to find myself some place new. It’s looked like a theater with countless arched rows of seats. A flag hung behind a large, tiered podium in the front. The blue carpet, admittedly, was a bit much.

“It’s empty,” I said. “I did this?”

“Yes,” the Devil said. “The seats in the House are empty, and they’ll stay empty. In fact, all the seats in the Capitol are empty now, across the whole nation as well. The people asked for it, and you made it real.”

“So, who makes the laws then?”

“You make the laws.”

I nodded.

The Devil placed his hands over my eyes. “Time to get back to work.”

I was back in the round office, back at the oak desk, staring down at an image of myself on the laptop screen.

“How about another question?” the Devil said.

“Okay,” I said. I was finally getting used to things.

Another question popped up in the white box at the bottom of the screen.

Roy Conly: I want there to be absolute peace in our nation.

“That’s a tall order,” I said. “How do I solve that one?”

“Well,” the Devil said, “all you need to do is remove the troublemakers. Anyone who stands in the way of absolute peace needs to go. Sensible, right?”

I nodded. “I guess… but… only those that are standing in the way of peace, right?”

“Yes,” the Devil said, placing his hand over his heart. “Of course.”

“Fine,” I said, placing my hands firmly on the desk. I needed to brace myself for this one. I closed my eyes. “If you stand in the way of peace, you need to go.”

I almost expected myself to disappear, but I didn’t. “I’m still here,” I said.

“Of course,” the Devil said. “You’ve brought peace to the nation. You’re not the problem here.”

I looked at the computer screen. The white chat box was blank. “But… then… why is no one thanking me like last time.”

“Well, there’s no one left to thank you,” the Devil said. “If there are people, there will be conflict, so they had to go. Peace cannot exist if even two people are left. But you’ve fixed that. There aren’t even two people left. There’s only one.”

“Me?” I said, pointing up at my own, surely confused, face.

“Yes,” the Devil said. “You are now the most powerful, most significant person in the nation. You’ve made such a difference in so many lives.”

“But what does it matter if there’s nobody left to rule over?”

“Ah, it’s seems you’ve learned a lesson,” the Devil said. “Faster than most, I’d imagine.”

The Devil snapped his fingers and a digital clock with bold red numbers appeared on the desk. The time was counting down. It read thirty-five hours and forty-nine minutes.

“It’s only been eleven minutes?” I said. “What the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of my time?”

“If you’d like,” the Devil said, “I can get you a job transfer.”

I was feeling lonely already. The people were gone, and I was all alone again, behind a desk and growing increasingly bored by the second. “Will I still be in charge?” I asked.

“Of course,” the Devil said. “We had a deal, and I’m a man of my word. This will only take a moment.”

The Devil covered my eyes, I took a breath, and we were gone.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Stale meat. Dirty mop water. Mildly fresh coffee. I was home.

The Devil’s hands fell away, I opened my eyes, and I was back behind the counter at my 7-Eleven. The Devil stood beside me.

“Welcome home,” the Devil said. “I thought you might like this. You’ve done me quite a service today. You’ve given me more sheep for my flock, but they need to be processed. And it might take some time. I know I said thirty-six hours, but how would you like to be in power a little longer?”

“What do I need to do?”

The Devil snapped his fingers, and the front doors flung open. A stream of people poured in. They lined up at the counter, and the line seemed to extend infinitely beyond the door, through the parking lot, and into a hazy distance.

“It’s simple,” the Devil said, pulling a tall stack of paper from beneath the counter and slamming it down in front of me.

The top of the stack reached my eye level. There were names on the top page.

The Devil continued. “These people need to be admitted. They’ll tell you their name, and you’ll check it off this list.” He placed a fountain pen on top of the stack of paper and set a rubber stamp and ink pad on the counter. “Once you have them checked off, you give them a stamp across their forehead.”

“What does the stamp say?” I asked.

The Devil tapped the rubber stamp onto the ink pad and pressed it onto my forehead.

I looked down at the reflective glass set into the countertop above the lottery tickets. I could only read it backwards, but I could read it well enough. In bold red letters, it read DAMNED.

“Well, you’ve got about a couple hundred million people to process here,” the Devil said. “You’ve certainly been a very busy boy.”

“And where do they go?” I asked.

The Devil pointed toward the back corner, back by the Slurpee machine. The doorway into the backroom had a sign hanging above it. It read HELL.

“You can come along when you’re done,” the Devil said. “Feel free to take your time. You’ve earned it.”

With that he was gone, vanished in an instant.

I stared out at the line of what surely must have been hundreds of millions of people, if the Devil was to be believed. Everything single one of them had to talk to me, and I had to talk to them.

I turned to the first person in line. “Name, please?” I said with a smile.

“Lucy Wilcox,” she said.

“Hi there Lucy,” I said. The name sounded familiar. “Just a moment. Let me find your name.”

I started flipping through the stack of pages in front of me. The top page was the A’s. The second page was also the A’s. The third, fourth, and fifth pages were also the A’s.

“This might take a while,” I said, lifting the rubber stamp and pressing it onto her forehead. “If you’d like a cup of coffee, feel free to help yourself right over there.” I nodded over toward the coffee pot beneath the drip. “I’m sure I’ll find your name soon enough.”

I continued flipping through the pages.

Still on the A’s.

Still on the A's.

Still on the A's.

And, in that moment, I was happy. Unusually happy.

I had a purpose.

I felt significant.

I had power.

I wasn’t alone.

“Mutations that are acquired in life are called somatic mutations,” Ellie said, reading from a dusty biology textbook as her feet dangled from the edge of her bed. “Often, they are localized and are not passed on to progeny unless they occur within the gametes.”

“What does that mean?” Tom said, squinting his eyes at the page as he hovered over his sister. He hated biology.

“I don’t know,” Ellie said, shrugging. “It’s your textbook. I’ve got six more years until I take 9th grade biology.”

“Well, keep reading,” Tom said. He started pacing back and forth. “There’s got to be something useful in there.”

Ellie found her place on the page and continued reading. “If the gametes of one parent contain a mutation, that mutation will be passed on to their offspring, and the mutation will be present in every cell of the resulting zygote.”

“So, does that mean the animals are safe or not?”

Ellie flipped to the end of the book, found the glossary, and ran her finger down the page until she found the word gamete. Her eyes widened and her cheeks blushed.

“Um,” Ellie said, closing the book and handing it to Tom. “I think it’s saying that if the blast happened after a birth, the animals are okay.”

“Only okay?”

“Well, as okay as we are.”

“Fair enough,” Tom said, drumming his fingers on the book’s cover. “And, what about animals born after the blast?”

“Well, then, they may have inherited a mutation.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know.”

Tom’s drumming grew louder and fiercer.

“Dammit!” Tom said, tossing the book on the floor. A cloud of dust rose up around it. “I’m going out there. I don’t care what mom says. I’m sick of being stuck here.”

“She hasn’t said anything,” Ellie whispered.

“That’s the point. She’s been sick for five days now, and she needs food. Good food. And Dad’s not coming back. Deadbeat said he was going to drive to town, listen for a radio signal, and hope that the President had something meaningful to say about all this. As far as I can tell, Dad’s got nothing to tell us, and neither does Kennedy. The fact that we haven’t heard anything from anyone, and no one’s coming around says it all. We have to do something, unless you want to start eating the flies and the rats in the wellhouse.”

“Where are you gonna go?” Ellie said, looking out her bedroom window.

“I’m going to check our trees. Someone has to.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Tom said, turning toward the door of Ellie’s bedroom.

Ellie stood up and dusted off her dress. “Then I’m coming with you. It’ll at least stop you from doing something stupid.”

Tom smiled. “Then maybe you shouldn’t come.”

“I’m coming!”

“Well then, put on your coat, and grab a scarf. It’s cold out there.”

Tom went to the closet near the front door of the farmhouse and pulled out his father’s fur-lined parka. He didn’t have one of his own. He hadn’t needed one until now.

Ellie was in the kitchen, dressed and ready, pulling a potato sack from the wastebin.

Tom walked over to her. “I don’t think we’re going to need that,” he said.

“Why not?” Ellie said, holding open the bag. “Look how big it is. Imagine how much fruit it’ll hold.”

“Fine,” Tom said with a sigh. A sigh not only for the useless potato sack, but also for the calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen. According to the calendar, it was August. The calendar doesn’t lie. Looking through the kitchen window, it looked like December. With another sigh, he waved Ellie along. “Let’s go before Mom wakes up.”

Tom walked to the front door and pushed Ellie behind him before he opened it. The chill of the air was enough to make him want to close the door again, but he had already come this far. The sky was gray, and the sun was gone. It felt like winter, but there was no snow. And, yet, the ground was covered.

Tom bent down and ran his fingers through the gray dust that coated the wooden porch. It smelled like a cozy fire on a cold winter night. It was ash.

Tom led Ellie out through the front door of the farmhouse and around to the side, beside the chimney. There stood a pile of firewood stacked high as the roof. Set a few feet out from it was an old tree stump with an axe stuck in it. It probably hadn’t seen use since February, back when real winter had come to an end. But now they were in a new winter. An August winter; made real enough by the madmen with their fingers on the buttons. The way the government talked about it, you duck and cover and it’s over. But it had been a week now. It wasn’t over.

Tom pulled the axe from the stump and hoisted it over his shoulder. It felt good. “More useful than a potato sack,” he said.

“We’ll see,” Ellie said, clutching the potato sack tight between her fingers.

“The first orchard is about a half-mile down the road, and Dad’s still got the Ford, wherever he is.”

“Like you know how to drive it anyway.”

“He lets me drive it when Mom’s not around.”

“Me too,” Ellie said, smiling.

“Well it’s gone now, so let’s get walking.”

Tom twirled the axe in his hands as they walked down the dirt road, following the path of a wooden fence toward the first of the orchards. It was an apple orchard, and the harvesting season was already in full swing. The hired help had been working it while his father lounged on the couch. They must have fled on the day of the blast because Tom never saw them again. They probably took what they could and went home to their families. That’s what Tom would have done. Every man for himself. Mom had been out that day. She was driving home in the Ford after bringing a lunch out to the workers. She inhaled more than a bit of what rained down out of the sky that day.

Even when his father left for town, Tom didn’t believe for one second that he was coming back. He probably thought that anywhere was better than here. He was probably right.

“Here it is,” Tom said, pointing the head of the axe over toward an opening in the wooden fence.

They didn’t really need to wait for the opening in the fence to see the state of the orchard. It was like summer had crashed straight into the wall of winter. There were apples, alright, but they were all on the ground, not on the trees.

The apple trees themselves were bare to the bone. Leaves littered the ground around them and appeared to already be mulching. The new soil was as black as the apples themselves.

“We can’t eat this,” Tom said, tipping the rusty axe back onto his shoulder.

“It doesn’t smell so bad,” Ellie said.

“If we eat them, we’ll be as sick as Mom. Believe me.”

Ellie massaged the burlap of the potato sack between her fingers. “So, what do we do?”

“We keep walking,” Tom said. “These orchards are useless.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“But… then… where are we going?”

“Roger Alder usually keeps a healthy crop of livestock in his pens. He might be able to spare something.”

Ellie seemed to be eyeing the axe in Tom’s hand.

“It’s two miles back the other way,” Tom said, pointing back toward their farmhouse. “You sure you still want to come?”

“I’m coming,” Ellie said firmly.

“Good,” Tom said, tapping the head of the axe into his palm. “We might have a lot to carry.”

They walked for over half-an-hour before finding themselves in the driveway of Roger Alder, looking up at his screened-in porch.

Through the screen, shadowed beneath a gable, was Roger Alder, sitting in his rocking chair, but he wasn’t rocking. He was just sitting.

“Mr. Alder?” Tom called out from across the driveway.

There was no response.

“Mr. Alder?” he shouted again. “It’s me, Tom, from the Barrows farm.”

Tom could feel Ellie tugging on the back of his parka. “He’s not moving,” she said.

“I’m gonna go see about him,” Tom said, his fingers gripping the axe tight and squeezing it firm against his chest. “Don’t go anywhere. You hear me?”

Ellie nodded.

Tom took his steps across the driveway with caution. The view was no better, even when he placed his foot on the first step of the porch. He mounted the second step, flipped the latch on the porch’s screen door and swung the door open.

“Mr. Alder?” Tom said, feeling sweat collect around his palms in spite of the cold.

He stepped inside.

Roger Alder sat in his rocking chair, motionless, his eyes closed and his face peaceful. A thick coating of ash covered the brim of his straw hat, the legs of his jeans, and the hollows of his eyes. He was dead. Tom was sure of that.

There should have been a smell. But not even the rotten apples and leaves going to mulch in the orchard had much of a smell. Maybe being out in the air for so long was having an effect on their senses.

“Tom!” Ellie cried out from somewhere beyond the porch.

Tom looked out through the screen door to find Ellie absent from the driveway.

“Dammit, Ellie!” Tom called out. “Where the hell are you?”

“Around back!” Ellie replied.

Tom descended the porch stairs and slammed the screen door behind him, causing the whole porch to rattle. He raced around the side of the house to find a small red barn in the back. The large barn doors were swung wide and only shadows lurked inside.

“C’mon, Tom!” Ellie called out from inside the barn. “Come see!”

“What are you doing in there, Ellie!” Tom said, walking up to the open barn doors. “I told you to stay in the driveway.”

“But… look,” Ellie said through the darkness.

The barn was unlit except for the back wall where a missing roof board allowed a bit of dim, gray light to shine down from the bleak sky above.

On the straw ground sat Ellie and a single sheep resting on its side. The sheep’s wool was patchy and hung off its body in limp, yellowed clumps.

As Tom walked deeper into the barn, he could see that the pens were empty. The gates had been opened and the animals had been released. Whether it was Roger Alder who did it or someone else, Tom didn’t know. All he knew was that the animals were gone. All but one. Even from where he stood, the sheep didn’t look well. In fact, it was moving about as much as Roger Alder.

Ellie draped her potato sack over the sheep’s body.

“Is she?” Tom said, kneeling down beside Ellie.

Ellie nodded. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her coat. “But… look behind her,” she said.

Tom craned his neck to find that there were two little lambs behind the sheep, behind what was surely their mother.

“Look how tiny they are,” Ellie said, reaching over and running a finger through one of the baby lamb’s wool. Her finger came back wet.

“They must have just been born,” Tom said, setting his axe down on the straw of the barn floor.

Ellie was staring at the axe, and tears were flowing again. “Are we going to…”

Tom shook his head. “No, I don’t think we can.”

Ellie rubbed at her cheeks again, this time with both sleeves. She looked relieved.

“They came into this world no worse for wear,” Tom said. “Maybe they survived, protected inside from it all. Just like us. I bet they’re hungry.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said.

Tom reached over the mother, picked up one of the lambs, and handed it to Ellie. “Can you carry this one?” he said.

Ellie nodded.

Tom reached down for the other lamb and picked it up. As he did so, something scurried out from beneath it. It looked like a cockroach, but it was blood red.

“You ever see a red cockroach before?” Tom said, cradling the second lamb in his arms.

“No,” Ellie said, standing up with her own lamb. “I don’t think there are red cockroaches.”

“Must be my imagination,” Tom said. “We’d better get going.”

“Where to?”

“We keep on walking,” Tom said, scanning the ground for the red cockroach. “Mom needs food. We need food. And I think there’s a lot more that we need to see.”

Tom was turning to leave when he heard Ellie scream.

“Ow!” Ellie said. “It bit me. It fell out of the lamb’s mouth and bit me.”

“What bit you?”

“It was red.”

“Like a cockroach?”

Ellie nodded feverishly. She was still clutching the lamb, but a red welt was rising up on the back of her hand.

Tom held out his own lamb in one extended arm and pried open its mouth with his free hand. He gave the lamb a quick shake, and two red cockroaches fell out onto the straw floor. They were gone in an instant, scurrying away to who knows where.

“Put down your lamb, Ellie,” Tom said, setting his own lamb down onto the ground.

Ellie bent down, and the lamb practically fell through her arms onto the straw floor.

Tom picked up the axe, swept Ellie behind him, and reached out toward the mother sheep’s head. He had to know. He just had to.

Tom pinched the wool beneath the mother lamb’s chin and gave it a sharp tug.

The mouth fell open, Tom gasped, and red was all he saw.